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Maury Obstfeld WEO Key Messages

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SHOTLIST

Washington, DC – Recent1. B-ROLL: Exterior IMF

Washington, DC --- 13 July 20182. Midshot, Maury Obstfeld3. SOUNDBITE: (English) Maury Obstfeld, IMF Research Department Director: “The expansion continues. Our forecast for 3.9 percent growth for this year and next is unchanged, but the expansion is also less balanced. We have downgrades for the UK and Japan, while the US continues to grow strongly. In the emerging world, some countries are up… some are down.”4. Midshot, Maury Obstfeld5. SOUNDBITE: (English) Maury Obstfeld, IMF Research Department Director: “Well, we now project that risks are more tilted to the downside even in the near-term and the biggest of those risks is the risk that current trade tensions escalate in to a cycle of protection and retaliation that takes a chunk out of growth. There are of course other risks that we have emphasized before. Public debts, private debts are very high and if financial conditions should tighten unexpectedly this would put a lot of borrowers under strain. It would create a difficult situation for emerging markets as well.”6. Midshot, Maury Obstfeld7. SOUNDBITE: (English) Maury Obstfeld, IMF Research Department Director: “There are things that countries can do on their own, there are things they have to do together. On their own, all countries need growth-enhancing structural reforms. Many need to rebuild fiscal buffers because the next recession will definitiely come. But the multilateral system and multilateral cooperation will need continues attention. In the trade area this is particularly urgent. There is a lot of room to improve the functioning of the global trade system. But there are also continuing challenges from climate change, from international taxation, from global imbalances, from migration where countries need to get together and come up with common solutions.”